Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1997

Abstract

Excerpt: "The assassination of NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers during the early hours of June 12, 1963 delivered a severe blow to the "Jackson movement"-a local insurgency dedicated to direct action and racial desegregation in the Mississippi capitol. 1 In the days following the murder and Evers's funeral, "go slow" forces within the NAACP and the Kennedy administration employed successful strategies to curtail the movement's sustained confrontation campaigns. Still, the deeply felt dissatisfaction of black Mississippians regarding segregation and its implications could not be quickly or strategically allayed. And in the months following Evers's death, African American frustration with the segregationist status quo motivated further direct action attacks on the terrain of consumerism, popular culture, and entertainment in the Jackson area."

Comments

Originally published as chapter 14 in The Revolution Wasn’t Televised: Sixties Television and Social Conflict, edited by Lynn Spigel and Michael Curtin. New York: Routledge, 1997.

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